Chapter XXXV. 



From Wintergreens to Choffweeds. 



The twenty-seventh order includes six families, two of which, 

 the wintergreens and the heaths, are represented in Minnesota. 

 About twenty two species of heaths are native to the state. 

 Here are classified the huckleberries, cranberries, blueberries, 

 snowberries, bearberries, trailing arbutuses, checkerberries, 

 leatherleafs, Cassiopes, rosemarys, laurels, Menziesias, and Lab- 

 rador teas. To this family belong also the azalias, rhododen- 

 drons and heathers. 



Wintergreens. The wintergreen family in Minnesota com- 

 prises nine or ten species of true wintergreens; the one-flow- 

 ered wintergreen, two pipsissewas or spotted wintergreens, the 

 pine-drops, the Indian-pipe or corpse-plant, and the pine-sap 

 or false beechdrops. The last three plants named do not 

 exhibit leaf-green but absorb their food from the humus of the 

 forest floor, taking up organic substances and manufacturing 

 no starch of their own. The others are green plants with 

 somewhat the appearance of the heaths, except that they are 

 not so shrubby. The wintergreens, from branched under- 

 ground rootstocks, produce upright stems usually less than a 

 foot in height. The flowers are commonly grouped in a single 

 slim terminal raceme, each flower nodding or erect in the 

 axil of a small bract or scale. In some of the varieties the flow- 

 ers have the stigmas and stigma-stalks bent down, while in 

 others the stigma projects in the centre of the flower. 



The round-leafed wintergreen, very abundant in pine woods, 

 throughout the northern part of the state, has rounded or 

 broadly oval leaves, of a leathery texture, shining and ever- 

 green, and spreading out at the base of the straight, tall flower- 

 bearing axis. The flowers are white, rather large and sweet- 

 scented and are arranged, eight or ten together, in their ra- 



